Abstract

Little is known about how air strikes influence insurgent behavior toward civilians. This study provides evidence that air strikes against the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) by counterinsurgency forces were a contributing factor in its civilian victimization. I theorize that air strikes expanded the distribution of insurgent fatalities to include higher-echelon membership and, at the same time, imposed psychological impairments on its fighters. As a consequence, these changes relaxed restraints on civilian abuse at the organizational and individual levels. This theory is informed by interviews of ISIS defectors and translations of ISIS documents and tested through a statistical analysis of granular-level data on air strikes and one-sided violence during ISIS’s insurgency. These findings contribute to our knowledge of insurgent behavior and provide important policy implications in the use of air strikes as a counterinsurgency (COIN) tool.

摘要

人们对空袭如何影响叛乱分子对平民的行为知之甚少。这项研究提供的证据表明，反叛乱部队对伊拉克和叙利亚伊斯兰国 (ISIS) 的空袭是其平民受害的一个促成因素。我的理论是，空袭扩大了叛乱分子死亡人数的分布范围，将更高级别的成员包括在内，同时对其战士造成了心理障碍。因此，这些变化在组织和个人层面放松了对平民虐待的限制。这一理论来自对 ISIS 叛逃者的采访和 ISIS 文件的翻译，并通过对 ISIS 叛乱期间空袭和单方面暴力的细粒度数据的统计分析进行了测试。